 | FOOTBALL CLUB |
| FOOTBALL CLUB |
THE FARM
MY LIFESTYLE
ON MY TRAVELS
There are more links at the top and bottom of each page.
These concern the administration of the site, but you should visit them just the same.
SITE SPONSORS
please support them
2nd XI v AIGUEPERSE FC
8th OCTOBER 2011
I was two minutes late this evening getting to the match and I almost missed the excitement. I hadn't even reached my habitual spec on the ground when Pionsat scored the first goal.
It wsa a corner that Pionsat had won from a free kick and apparently it was Christophe who got on the end of the ball into the area - loitering in the penalty area as usual - and opened the scoring. It was a nice way to warm up the crowd anyway. Freezing as we were on the terraces, it's hard to come to terms with the fact that last weekend we had to pause midway through each half to allow drinks to be brought to the players.
from the restart Aigueperse go on the attack and win a free kick about 25 yards out of goal in the inside-left position. The ball is driven into the wall, clips one of the defenders standing there and balloons up into the air.
That ball could have gone anywhere from that incident but it loops over everyone and everything, including the bar and clips the stanchion on its way down and out for a corner. Michael though, in the Pionsat goal, was well-placed to shepherd it out of play.
From a position wide out on the right-hand touchline, about 20 yards from the goal line, one of the Pionsat players, with nothing better to do with the ball, punts a long one right into the penalty area, more in hope than in expectation.
The ball doesn't trouble anyone at all on the field and arrives at the keeper. He simply lets it go in between his hands and straight into the corner of the net for a second goal for Pionsat. No wonder his colleague bows his head in disbelief.
Mind you, who am I to criticise the keeper? I remember when I kept goal for Crewe Civil Service back in the mid-1980s and in one match letting a harmless skyer clean through my hands while under no pressure at all.
I was saved from embarrassment on that occasion by an offside flag. No such relief for the gardien here. They all count no matter how they go in.
And Pionsat almost score a third goal a few minutes later. There's a ball played right over the defence diagonally from the far side and it's well over the heads of everyone in the centre.
A Pionsat player steaming down the left wing reaches the ball and lets one go. It's heading for the goal with the keeper on the wrong foot but one of his defenders just about manages to get a foot on it to stop it dead on the edge of the goal area. with no-one from Pionsat following up, the defender has the time to clear the ball out of danger.
This time it's Aigueperse who win the ball in defence. They break down the Pionsat inside-left position the whole length of the field and finally have a shot on goal. Michael, who is keeping goal for the 2nd XI and how nice it is to see him back in goal after his lengthy injury, does well to get down to that and hang on to the ball.
But notice the Pionsat defenders. All in the right place for once. The back line is looking so much tighter with Malik, who notmally plays full-back and who was missing from the team for much of last season, playing tonight as a libero just in front of the back four. Clearly someone has been reading my notes from last week about players tracking back to help out the defence.
At the moment Aigueperse has the Pionsat defence under some pressure. One of the Pionsat defenders concedes a free kick for handball and Michel, who is refereeing this evening, is in no doubt that it was within the area and so awards a penalty.
But it's not a very good penalty to say the least, and Michael doesn't have too much difficulty getting down to that particular one. if you are going to take a penalty at this level of football, the key is to hit it really hard. With the absence of very much in the way of goalkeeping technique at this level, saving a penalty is really a game of chance and keepers have much less chance the harder you hit it.
And do you notice the jersey that Michael is wearing this evening? It's one of the ones that I offered the club a year or so ago, with my business name and logo on the back.
It seems to me that Pionsat's attack has gone right off the boil this last few minutes or so. It's nothing like as effective as it was earlier in the game. There are huge gaps opening up between the midfield and the attackers and it's giving the Aigueperse players time on the ball and a route back into the game as they crowd out the Pionsat forwards.
There have been one or two chances just now where Aigueperse could have pegged a goal back, and if the Pionsat players don't get their finger out and don't get their act together here, I sense a tragedy.
And almost as I predicted, Pionsat concede a goal. It's a penalty and it's struck so much better than the first one, sending Michael completely the wrong way.
The penalty though was a soft one and a more needless one than this I haven't seen for quite a while. It all stemmed from a backpass to Michael in goal, but he sliced his clearance and sliced it big-time too, as even the best professional keepers do on occasion. The ball was spinning out for a corner down on the edge of the penalty area and one of the Aigueperse players sprinted after it.
If I had been out there I would have stayed on my line after that because there was no real pressure in that kind of situation and the attacker wasn't going to do much with the ball down there before a Pionsat defender would have closed him down.
In any case, the keeper rushing off his line would always finish second in this situation and you need to be at least a yard in front of the defender in order to hack it clear. You can't handle the ball from that incident for having already touched it, you eould be conceding a free kick anyway.
Michael however decides to run off his line after the attacker and after the ball to try to keep him out of harm's way. What followed was that with the attacker shielding the ball while waiting for assistance, the kindest thing to say was that there was a "collision" between the two players. Michel blows for a foul, about which there can be no dispute, and goes over to inspect the position of the incident. Having satisfied himself that this occurred in the penalty area, he awards a penalty and that was that.
I've said before and I'll say it again that a keeper needs to be 100% sure of getting the ball before running off his line. At this level of football the odds are heavily in favour of the keeper in a one-on-one situation in front of goal.
I have to say that Pionsat looked much more comfortable playing at this level, and the defence looked so much better tonight than it has done for quite a while. But the attack, which seemed to start like a train, petered out after half an hour and it all became rather ragged. It took me all of the first half to realise that Thomas, who single-handedly took a much-bigger defence apart last week was on the field tonight playing in midfield.
Having said that though, a victory is a victory no matter how it is won and the team can play this season with a level of quiet optimism if they can keep it up. This 5-man defence certainly works at this level of football, but the three midfielders must realise that they have to work much harder and that they have much more ground to cover
Back to the footy page
Il y a sans doute des francophones qui aimeraient lire cette page en français. Donc vous devez m'aider á la traduire!
En plus, si vous avez des choses á ajouter,
home page | latest updates | site map | site index
about this site | audience participation | copyright notice | technical issues | accessibility statement | read this | contact me
©